Imagine if you will that instead of being the product of thousands of years of emergent storytelling, coming up with mythology was somebody’s job, presumably at some sort of firm. Now imagine that one of the people working at that firm—let’s call him “Jerry”, just for the sake of the scenario—woke up one morning with a hangover and it suddenly realized that he was supposed to have a big presentation today of the mythical creature he’d been working on. Jerry calls the office, and discovers to his horror that the creature department had a major server crash during the night and they’ve lost everything. Desperate, Jerry hastily throws something together and prays to whomever it is he prays to that nobody would notice.

Now, that scenario is, of course, ridiculous. But if that were to happen, the result would probably come out looking something like the rompo.

There’s very little information I’ve been able to track down on the creature, but I do know a few things. It has the front legs of a badger and the back legs of a bear, the head of a hare, the ears of a human, and the torso of a skeleton. That’s 4 different animals, and a skeleton.

It feeds on human corpses, so it falls squarely within the criteria for what’s traditionally classified as a “bad” creature, but then again, the phrasing (“corpses” rather than “people”) suggests that it doesn’t actually kill anyone for its meals, preferring to nosh on whatever dead people it finds just lying around. So… less something a king would send a brave knight in shining armor to slay, and more along the lines something an undertaker might call the Orkin man to set traps for. It isn’t so much a horrible monster as it is a vaguely creepy pest.

What really gets me is its voice, described as “crooning”. Now, I know that this word originally meant a sort of soft, melodious humming, and that that’s probably the sense in which it’s used here, but I can’t help but imagine the freaky little weasel monster wandering around a graveyard belting out Fly Me to the Moon or Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.

All in all, the rompo always struck me as a bit rushed, hence my little story about Jerry and his workplace dilemma, but nonetheless I consider it another one of my favorites. It feels lazy and forced, but with such earnest conviction that the resulting bathos lends it a certain charm. It may not be the sort of monster that you scream and cower in fear from, but it is absolutely the sort of monster that one might dress up in costume and attend a midnight screening of (if monsters worked like movies, which they don’t), and in my book that’s just as good.

Like this:

This is kind of a new feature I’ve decided to start posting here on the BrokenEye Media blog. I’m starting a series of illustrations depicting various mythological and folkloric creatures, both well-known and obscure (but mostly obscure) that I think are interesting, with a description of each in my usual turgid, irreverent, aside-laden parlance, in the tradition of mediæval bestiaries. However, unlike mediæval bestiaries, I’m abandoning all pretense of having anything to do with beasts allegedly found in nature, and I will not be going way out of my way to shoehorn an unnecessarily preachy and ridiculously contrived lesson on woefully outdated middle-aged quasi-Biblical morals into each description (which they did, because mediæval theology was weird). So if the Word of God as (allegedly) taught by the (allegedly) natural creatures (allegedly) of His Creation is what you’ve come here for, I’m afraid you’re going to leave disappointed, but I doubt that it is. So, without further ado, here’s the first entry in the Bestiarium:

This one is probably one of my favorites because of how… creatively horrifying it is.

Though it can be described as the Aboriginal version of the vampire, the yara-ma-yha-who actually has very little in common its European brethren. True, it is a monstrous humanoid that sucks the blood of humans and can transform them into one of its own in the process, but the similarity ends there… which isn’t nearly as reassuring as it may initially sound.

This little red man makes it home in the branches of fig trees where it waits patiently and surprisingly stealthily for some poor, unwary traveler to pass by. When they do, the yara-ma-yha-who strikes in an instant, ensnaring them in its long, tentacular fingers lined with tiny lamprey-like suckers which it uses to slowly drain their blood. Not that it needs the blood for sustenance, mind you. It’s just that prey that’s weak from blood loss tend to be much less likely to resist or fight back. Once the creature’s hapless victim has been rendered nice and languid, the yara-ma-yha-who unhinges its toothless jaw and swallows them whole. After taking a drink from a nearby stream (because its important to stay hydrated), the monster takes a nap, it’s prey imprisoned—weak but very much alive—in its distensible stomach. When it wakes, it vomits up its victim, their skin ever-so-slightly redder, their build ever-so-slightly shorter than before.

If the victim is lucky, they’ll merely be sent on their way (feeling utterly horrified and no doubt somewhat violated) with the knowledge that they should stay away from that tree, lest they be caught and swallowed again. If they’re not lucky, the beast will skip the waiting, grab them again and repeat the process right then and there, swallowing and regurgitating them again and again until they’re completely transformed into another lurking yara-ma-yha-who ready and patiently waiting to prey on innocent travelers.

So yeah, kinda like a vampire, but a thousand times more abhorrent and not even remotely sexy. Unless you’re into that, I guess, though the knowledge that there are actually people who are into that (whatever the hell that is) just makes the whole thing all the more abhorrent.

Unlike my previous movie posters, this is for something I actually intend to put into production. Not as a film, mind you, but a series of webisodes.

The basic concept is that these will be events, characters. and other things from dreams I’ve had, all strung together into something resembling a coherent plot, although still operating largely on dream logic.

I’ve begun an initial release of a rough draft of the series on Spore: Galactic Adventures to test the waters, and see how people like it. So far I’ve gotten a very positive response, so the chances of the actual webisodes are pretty good. Originally they were going to be at the end of the line as far as animation projects go, but upon further consideration I’ve decided to do them first on account of them being the shortest.

The chap on the poster isn’t actually from any of my dreams, however. He’s an original character named Mr. Billycock, who’s going to be standing in for a portion of the generic people that have played a key parts in my dreams but who’s names and appearances I can’t remember (you know how dreams are). I’ll be designing a few more similarly surreal characters to do the same, because Mr. Billycock can’t stand in for everyone I’ve forgotten (and indeed, he’s only going to stand in for characters who were, in the dream, allied close acquaintances of mine, of roughly the same rank/social stature as myself but with more knowledge about the situation at hand). These characters will all have more fleshed-out personalities than merely playing substitute for forgotten mental constructs, Mr. Billycock being a trickster figure who knows a good deal more than he’s letting on.

Billycock was visually inspired by René Magritte’s painting “Son of Man”, the Mad Hatter from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and a bit of raw surrealist imagination on my part. The shape of his cufflink is an inanimate floating figure from a very surreal and completely uneventful reoccurring nightmare I used to have when I was a kid (those who have Spore: Galactic Adventures can find a recreation of that dream here)

The image in his hand is of a teleportation device (an odd fusion of a stargate, a warp pipe, a slide, and a bowling alley) which is a reoccurring background detail in my dreams, which I occasionally actually use. You sit down on the bowling ally floor and slide towards the portal. What happens next tends to change a bit, but you end up somewhere other than where you were before.

The Spore series can be found here or by scanning the QR code in the upper right hand corner of the poster. I’ll add a link to the video series once I’ve started on that.

Just an edit of an old World War II propaganda poster that I made for fun. I may have mentioned in the past that I am seriously creeped out by Kewpie dolls. Its those eyes, man. Those smug, soulless black eyes. Always staring. Watching. Mocking, with that sadistic little smirk on their faces, like they’re up to something. Nothing good has a face like that, man.

Given the choice between the two of them watching me, I actually might prefer the Wehrmacht from the original poster. Sure, those guys were evil, but at least they didn’t look like something out of a toy maker’s nightmare. They didn’t grin a twisted little grin as they killed you, and stare directly into your soul, laughing at your sins.

Every time I think about the Cheshire Cat (who if I remember correctly is only ever referred to in the text as “the Cat”), and the vast majority of times I think about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in general, I almost immediately start to wonder about that trick he does where he disappears except for his smile (and occasionally his eyes). Specifically, if he were to turn around, would you see the backs of his eyes and teeth? This is never addressed in the book, mostly because its not important, and in TV in film adaption the Cat never turns away from the camera while in that form. But it really bugs me. Doesn’t help that I’ve really been getting into using imagery from Wonderland lately, as part of my general increasing interest in surrealism, absurdism, and general mindfuckery in film and literature (as supposed to just the static media), and as such have been thinking about it a lot more.

So yeah, that’s what this piece is about.

And yes, I drive myself crazy over this sort of nonsense without being stoned. God knows what sorts of things I’d start wondering about if I ever actually tried pot.

So the other day I was thinking about the Toads from the Mario series. You remember the Toads, right? Cheerful little midgets in vests with mushrooms growing out of their heads? Of course you do.

Wait. . . mushrooms growing out of their heads? That sound really painful. Especially since the mushrooms happen to be easily three times the size of the heads in question. So why the hell are they smiling all the time? Shouldn’t they be in horrible, horrible pain?

Well, who says they aren’t?

Maybe it isn’t the Toad who’s smiling. Maybe that mushroom has rooted itself not only is his skull but in his spine as well, seizing control over his nervous system. Playing him like a puppet. Walking around with his legs, and smiling cheerfully with his mouth while inside he’s in constant agony but hasn’t even got enough control over his body to scream.

That would be absolutely horrible if it were the case, but it can’t possibly be like that, right? Right?

But then again. . . it would explain why they’re all so clumsy all the time. The puppeteer’s control is never perfect. But surely that doesn’t mean anything, right? Right??

And why is the Mushroom Kingdom called the Mushroom Kingdom instead of… oh I don’t know… the Toad Kingdom. Perhaps because that’s exactly what it is: the Mushrooms’ kingdom. Or maybe its just a cute name, right? Right???

And the Kingdom is absolutely full of art depicting Mushrooms, but have you ever seen any art there depicting Toads? I sure haven’t. Why would the Toads draw their “hats” but not themselves? Because its not the Toads who are doing the drawing. . . or maybe they’ve just got some sort of cultural taboo against drawing people, like in Islam, right? RIGHT????

But no, they’ve got pictures of Princess Peach. She’s a person. A person who doesn’t appear to serve any administrative function in the government of the Mushroom Kingdom, and serves merely as a figurehead. A puppet ruler, if you will. How appropriate. At least, that’s all she is for now. Maybe they’re always keeping her locked up in the castle because they’re waiting for her to get infected with the Mushrooms herself, so they can make her their queen. But that would mean. . . that would mean that Bowser is actually trying to save her. And he keeps surrounding the Mushroom Kingdom with deathtraps and non-humanoid minions who aren’t compatible hosts for the Mushrooms as an attempt to establish a quarantine, while the Mushrooms constantly dupe Mario into “rescuing” the Princess that they don’t actually need. . . yet. Maybe Mario is even a carrier for the infection without knowing it, which is why he can never, ever return to New York… New York which has over eight million human beings living in it and around ten thousand flights arriving and leaving for all over the world every single day. But. . . but that’s impossible, right? R͍͎̪I̟̣̲̘̼̳̟GH͍̦̱͖̙ͅT͇?͔̠̜!̣̩̘͉̮͙?͔̜͖!̺?̖̯!͓̜͖͎?̣̣̥̮͓̖!̦͈͍̟̠?!

Like this:

This isn’t a movie I want to make so much as a movie I wish Hollywood would make.

They’re making a new ‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale‘ (aka ‘Total Recall‘) movie, as you may have heard, as part of the movie industry’s ongoing love affair with the novels of Philip K. Dick (yes, Hollywood loves Dick), reminding of me of one of my favorite Philip K. Dick books so far*, ‘UBIK‘ which I believe would make an awesome movie. Plus, it doesn’t have a long-winded title, and I know how much Hollywood hates the long-winded titles of Dick’s books. I still don’t know what a “blade runner” is (but then again, I never found out whether or not androids dream of electric sheep either).

Anyway, if you haven’t read ‘UBIK‘, read it. Its amazing. And if you’ve got connections in Hollywood, please tell them to stop bouncing the screenplay around and make the goddamn film already.

*To clarify that, I mean its one of my favorite Philip K. Dick books that I’ve read so far, not one of my favorites that he’s written so far. I’m well aware that he isn’t going to write anything new on account of the fact that he’s dead. Or are all of us the one’s who are dead, and Philip K. Dick really alive?

This image just popped into my head one night. Cthulhu reading peacefully in an Edwardian-style study. . . with a lacy tea coaster and a kitty cat(thulhu) curled up by the fire. I found the juxtaposition amusing. And yes, that is eldritch tea, because why the hell not.

If you look really closely (which is to say its only visible in the full sized version) at the ship-in-a-bottle on the shelf, its labeled as the Alert, one of the two ships featured in The Madness from the Sea

Also, its not actually legible, but in case you were wondering the writing on the side of the tea mug is this passage from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (along with the associated illustration), which I felt was curiously appropriate to the aforementioned juxtaposition of eldritch abomination and cozy reading by the fire (also one of my favorite literary quotes):

‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’

The picture in the frame on the bookshelf (to the right of Cthulhu’s face) was originally going to be ‘Delirium’, one of the pictures from my Insanitarium series, but it turned out to be too distracting, and too easy to mistake for a television, which in turn made it too easy to accidentally think Cthulhu was looking at the television picture instead of the book. This was the picture: